DESIGN OF MACHINERY CHAPTER 10
10.7 RADIUS OF GYRATION
The radius of gyration of a body is defined as the radius at which the entire mass of the body
could be concentrated such that the resulting model will have the same moment of inertia as the
original body. The mass of this model must be the same as that of the orig inal body. Let lzz
represent the mass moment of inertia about ZZ from equation 10.9c and m the mass of the original
body. From the parallel axis theorem, a concentrated mass m at a radius k will have a moment of inertia:
(10.lOa)
Since we want Izz to be equal to the original moment of inertia, the required radius of gyration at which we will
concentrate the mass m is then:
k= t (10.lOb)
Note that this property of radius of gyration allows the construction of an even sim pler dynamic
model of the system in which all the system mass is concentrated in a "point mass" at the end of a
mass less rod of length k. Figure 10-2b shows such a model of the mallet in Figure 10-2a.
By comparing equation 10.lOa with equation 10.8, it can be seen that the radius of gyration k will
always be larger than the radius to the composite CG of the original body.
:.k > d (10.lOc)
Appendix C contains formulas for the moments of inertia and radii of gyration of some common
shapes.